Ai Overview

Ai Overview

This article is about helping to understand how the Ai in Shards Online works.

Some Basics:

The Artificial Intelligence for NPCs follows a general Ai Principle which is the cycle of

• Sense
• Think
• Act

The model of implementation is a Finite State Machine(FSM). [Wikipedia Article Finite State Machine]

To understand how an FSM would transition from one state (e.g. "Idle") to another state (e.g. "Combat") in Shards Online (SO) it is important to understand the first step: "Sense".

How does an NPC sense the world?

There are several ways:

Messages

Messages using the Sendmessage function tell the NPC someone or something sent it a message. To understand Messages the NPC needs to have the appropriate EventHandlers.

Views

Views are added to objects by using the AddView command. A view is basically a search function performed on a configurably regular basis which triggers an event if something matching that search function enters its range.

FindObjects

The FindObjects function can be executed whenever an NPC needs to find something.